The Mon resistance has entered the post-coup conflict but still has a long way to go to replicate the success of other groups, starting with forging unity in a fractured landscape.
By ANDREW NACHEMSON | FRONTIER
Headlight beams slashed through the dark as a caravan of barely functional motorbikes whined and sputtered up a dirt road carved into the side of a mountain.
I clung tightly to the rear grab bars of one of the motorbikes as my driver swerved to avoid trees suddenly leaping into focus, at times careening dangerously close to the abyss gaping beyond the edge of the road.
These mountains form the border between Mon and Kayin states and serve as a foothold from which Mon soldiers launch attacks on the highway below, as part of their decadeslong crusade to secure a Mon homeland.
Our caravan arrived at the Mon resistance camp – a scattering of wooden huts in a rubber plantation, the ground covered in a layer of dead leaves – where I was greeted by the commanding officer, Major Banyar Mon.
Relieved to be alive, I gratefully accepted a glass of milky white toddy wine, which was still sweetly sour and lightly carbonated. I had a harder time stomaching the cold turtle curry.
We sat on a wooden platform in one of the open-air huts, abandoned long ago by plantation workers, which would also turn out to be my bed for the night. I was the first journalist from outside the Mon community to visit this area in years, my hosts said, and the whole camp turned out to watch Maj. Banyar Mon give me the lay of the land.
“The mountainous area east of the highway is under our control,” he explained, lighting a cheroot, the smoke mingling with the frost from his breath.
***
Every time Nai Banyal Leir met with representatives of the junta, he felt a keen sense of shame. But as a senior member of the New Mon State Party, which had observed a ceasefire with the Myanmar military since 1995, he felt he had little choice but to obey party policy.
“The NMSP was criticised by many people and looked down on by other groups,” he said, speaking to Frontier from a rocky outpost in Kayin, near the Thai border.
While Banyal Leir continued engaging the junta, which seized power in 2021, he wasn’t following party orders to a tee. He also met with fellow senior NMSP officials one on one, trying to convince them that now was the time to join the mass uprising against military rule.
Maj. Banyar Mon was one of those who was easily convinced. He felt “uncomfortable” when the NSMP remained on the sidelines after the military coup, and said the fruits of the ceasefire were only backed by a readiness to return to war.
“Even though we had a ceasefire we never put down our arms,” he explained to Frontier at the camp in Mon’s Mudon Township. “We always thought, if the opportunity to talk is blocked we are ready to fight again.”
The 2021 coup, which overthrew State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government, plunged the country into a civil war where new pro-democracy forces joined with longstanding ethnic armed groups.
But while other groups quickly entered the fight, the Mon nationalist movement was riven by divisions. Some were so disappointed with Aung San Suu Kyi’s track record on ethnic issues that they chose to collaborate with the new military regime to pursue their own political ends.
More than two decades after its bilateral ceasefire, the MNSP in 2018 joined several other ethnic armed groups in signing the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement, and the junta tried to continue peace talks with signatories even after the coup.
Banyal Leir said these talks turned out to be a pointless endeavour.
“We talked for three years and during that period there was no significant outcome that benefitted the NMSP, the Mon people or the country as a whole,” he said.
Others were wary that a return to war would jeopardise the security of civilians living in NMSP territory, like the tract of 37 Mon-majority villages in Kayin’s Kyainseikgyi Township. Visiting these villages, it’s clear they’ve benefited from economic development that could only come during times of peace.
NMSP-administered public services are provided to the local population, including schools that teach in Mon, a language that predates written Burmese and even influenced its script, which remains the common tongue in this area.
Many Mon nationalists resent that public schools and Buddhist institutions enforce the use of the Burmese language, particularly because the Mon are believed to be responsible for the spread of Theravada Buddhism in Myanmar, introducing it to the Bamar.
While the settlements are called villages, some more closely resemble towns, with well-built homes of stone, sturdy wood and brick with satellite dishes clustered around paved roads, electronics shops and Thai restaurants.
Despite the progress evident here, it was the military division in this region that first defected from the NMSP en masse one year ago, naming itself the NMSP-Anti Dictatorship, with Banyal Leir taking on the role of deputy leader.
Banyar Mon is leading the fight from a mobile command centre in the mountains that form the border between Mudon and Kyainseikgyi townships, changing location every few days to avoid probing artillery strikes. From this rugged terrain they launch attacks on the nearby Union Highway 8, ambushing soldiers as they leave their bases, while the NMSP-AD slowly increases its grip on sympathetic villages in the area.
A Mon homecoming
The emergence of the NMSP-AD served as a homecoming for Mon nationalists who had wanted to fight against the regime but were waiting for guidance from the veteran armed group. Smaller militias formed during that time, like the Mon Liberation Army, but unlike the NMSP, the newer groups had no fixed territory from which to launch attacks.
“The other Mon groups also asked why I didn’t join them,” said Kwot Sar.
The 39-year-old had signed up for the NMSP in 2010 when tensions with the military appeared on the verge of boiling over, but retired in frustration in 2017 when it seemed no fighting was on the horizon.
“[The NMSP-AD] is more organised in terms of its military and administration. It’s been around for many years and has a lot more experience. It’s hard to maintain an organisation for that long and I wanted to join a more structured organisation,” he explained.
It’s not only soldiers returning to the Mon fold.
Dr Min Win Lwin had just started a specialist surgeon course at Yangon General Hospital when the coup plunged Myanmar’s healthcare system into chaos. Like hundreds of thousands of others in the public sector, he went on strike in defiance of the military takeover.
When the armed conflict escalated, he smuggled himself into Kayin.
“I was going around with the Karen groups seeking anything to do against the coup,” he said over the whir of a generator that powers his hospital in Kyainseikgyi Township, explaining that he treated both resistance fighters and civilians there.
Hailing from Mon’s Chaungzon Township, he worked primarily with the Karen National Union, but always held out hope that the NSMP would join the fight.
“When the NMSP wasn’t active against the coup, I was really disappointed, but I understand the complexity of the political situation,” he said. “But now, I have a great chance to do that same job with my ethnic group, so I feel very good about that.”
The hospital in Kyainseikgyi fell into the NMSP-AD’s hands when the first military division defected. The primary care centre in the area, it’s open Monday to Friday and mainly treats civilians for ordinary medical problems, lacking the ability to perform complex surgery required for war injuries.
But, like the main NMSP-AD base in Kyainseikgyi, the military knows exactly where the hospital is located, raising fears over the possibility of airstrikes or artillery attacks. The regime often targets parallel public services in an attempt to undermine efforts by resistance groups to build autonomous statelets.
“We always feel like we are staying at the front line because it could happen at any time, but we have to do this job,” Min Win Lwin said.
While money is tight, the community takes care of people like Min Win Lwin. Civilians donate funds to maintain the hospital, and the staff there rarely have to pay for anything.
“We thought it would be just a few days or a few months and it would be over, but it’s still not over. Now it has been four years,” Min Win Lwin said, referring to the civil war that has been raging throughout Myanmar since the coup.
Members of ethnic armies who had fought for decades were more clear-eyed about the trajectory of the post-coup crisis. But during the massive protests in Yangon in 2021, there was a contagious feeling that a regime so universally despised by the people it intended to govern simply couldn’t stand.
“My hope to become a surgeon is lost, but from the coup until now we have many things to do,” Min Win Lwin said. “There are a lot of people who do a lot more than me.”
“Sometimes we all miss our past life,” he said with a small smile.
For Nai Ji Jhoon, the coup marked a turning point from peaceful activism to armed struggle. He was a member of the Mon Youth Forum, an organisation close to the NMSP and Mon Unity Party, the main Mon political party. The forum had some political objectives, such as delegating more power to state governments, but also focused on general youth issues like anti-drug campaigning, education and job opportunities for young people.
Despite the MUP and NMSP maintaining relations with the regime after the coup, Ji Jhoon’s activities were increasingly monitored by security forces, who followed him around and observed his meetings. Eventually, a friend in the MUP with contacts in the military called him and told him to leave the state capital Mawlamyine or face arrest.
“I stayed at a hut at a rubber plantation on the outskirts of the town for three months,” he said, mostly living off of fried eggs and vegetables. “Sometimes other villagers would come to visit me but sometimes I was alone for days at a time.”
During one of its negotiations with the regime, NMSP members told their counterparts that Ji Jhoon was under their protection, and to stop harassing him. Soon after, he was approached by the emerging NMSP-AD faction.
“I couldn’t do my work freely or safely so I decided to go with them.”
Ji Jhoon is now a member of the NMSP-AD military committee, but with a background in civil society and a law degree, he wears many hats.
“Sometimes I go to the front lines, sometimes I stay here to meet with the community and oversee things like health and education. I’m also a liaison between civil society groups, the administration and the civilians.”
Terms of disengagement
The initial plan was for the NMSP-AD to leave all administrative operations to NMSP central and only focus on waging war, but gradually it felt compelled to take on more responsibilities, like managing Min Win Lwin’s hospital and some elements of the local judicial system.
Given that the groups continue to collaborate on administrative affairs, some like Kwot Sar downplayed the seriousness of the schism.
“I don’t feel like [NMSP-AD] split away from the mother organisation. There are just some differences in opinion,” he said.
But others say it’s a bit more significant than that. One officer said his son has remained with the NMSP, straining their relationship.
“We hardly talk at all now and when we do talk, it’s mostly just about family matters,” he said, before shrugging. “We’ve made different choices.”
In October, tensions threatened to hit a boiling point. The NMSP’s Payathonesu military division also defected en masse to NMSP-AD at that time. The troops took with them a chunk of the border with Thailand, which is rich with economic opportunities, and where many senior NMSP leaders had homes.
Banyal Leir went so far as to accuse other NMSP leaders of maintaining the ceasefire with the regime to preserve “their own economic interests”. The Payathonesu defection led to a mad scramble of negotiations to defuse tensions and work out an arrangement by which NMSP leaders could still access the territory.
Banyal Leir said the NMSP-AD has about 1,000 troops – a far cry from the NMSP’s peak strength of 8,000 before the 1995 ceasefire. But the group is working on combining forces with the 500-strong MLA and other post-coup Mon militias.
Ji Jhoon explained they have formed a joint military operations force called the Ramanya Column with the MLA, Mon State Defense Force and Mon State Revolutionary Force, each contributing 25 soldiers, as a kind of testing ground before fully integrating their forces. Two representatives from each group sit on the command committee, but the seniormost officer is from the NMSP-AD.
But disagreements remain. Some of the post-coup groups are sceptical of the NMSP-AD for waiting so long to join the anti-junta struggle, and then immediately assuming a leading role over the forces in Mon. The NSMP-AD, meanwhile, thinks the militias have overstepped by forming or joining administrative bodies like the Mon State Federal Council.
“They tried to form a government before they had territory, but we only need one government in Mon,” said Ji Jhoon.
***
I kicked off my shoes and walked barefoot up hundreds of stone steps to a Buddhist temple carved into a ragged limestone mountain, riddled with caves where Mon monks meditate for weeks or months at a time.
Religion has long occupied an important role in the Mon nationalist movement. Major Imm Chan joined the NMSP in the 1980s, when, as a novice monk, he was barred from using the Mon language to study Buddhist scripture.
Back then, Mon rebels used the rocky crevices as cover while they took potshots at the Myanmar soldiers below. Legend has it that a cave runs like a tunnel through the entire mountain, known only to Mon troops, who used it to safely retreat. Today, all of the land in Kyainseigkyi visible from here is under NMSP control.
“The main difference is, back then, they were chasing us,” Imm Chan said when we met near the front lines in Kyaikmayaw Township. “Now we’re chasing them.”
